


The Fall and The Rise

by scheherazaade



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Depression, Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 00:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazaade/pseuds/scheherazaade
Summary: Maybe he had been broken, but he was better now, and stronger now, for it. He was greater, and more whole than he had ever been before.





	The Fall and The Rise

**Author's Note:**

> I just have a lot of feelings about Daniil Kvyat. I think what he’s doing is incredible. I think he’s incredible. To go from what must have felt like the lowest of lows, to come back, and be doing really great this season, and to moreover have visibly grown from and mentally overcome what must have felt like some of the worst times in his life, is no small achievement. It's really really cool to see.

When it all collapsed at the end of 2017, it was like the light had gone out of the world.

It was a bleak depression that fell over him. And yet, he clung to it helplessly, as it was a reprieve from his completely shot nerves and the anxiety that had haunted him for over a year, left him feeling hunted and damned, and left his hands shaking. Now, he mostly felt exhausted, and blank, and in his worst moments, so desperately low and alone that he might cry if he could summon up the energy to do so.

For so long he had been afraid of impending doom, and now that it had finally come, and the black curtain had fallen and swept him into the abyss, he had nothing left.

He slept throughout the days, watched the sun rise and set with apathy, ignored calls from his friends and family, and forgot how to be a part of the world. How could he face anyone else when he couldn’t even face himself. He could not hold their pity and their disappointment and their worry along with his own. How could he go on believing in himself when it seemed that the world had stopped believing in him.

And then, when he’d finished lying in bed for hours and days on end, thinking about what the hell was he going to do with himself, he had to pick himself up again, because the world wasn’t going to stop, not for him, not for anybody, and it was cruel, and it hurt, it hurt so fucking bad to realize that he had to scrape himself together, whatever bits of him that remained out of the decimated ruin he’d been left as. 

But he did it.

He read a lot, in the year that came. There were words that gave him comfort and wisdom. 

> _ In the dark times_
> 
> _Will there also be singing? _
> 
> _ Yes, there will also be singing. _
> 
> _ About the dark times. _
> 
> _ _ \- Bertolt Brecht__

Time began to mellow the raw, fierce, pain of wounds and disappointments, and come New Year, he found that he was able to laugh at what had happened to him, and to find the spare humor in the situation. The absurdity in the hurt. The good in the bad. A fledgling bloom in a desert wasteland. 

Of course it still hurt most of the time. Even when he laughed, it hurt. It had been his dream for so long. The fact that it had crumbled around him was enough, but the way it had been torn away from him? Cruel. The world knew it.

He could not stay away for long, and he went to the tracks as a development driver for Ferrari, and heard the song of the cars as they whizzed by, smelled the petrol, listened to the familiar sounds of mechanics, of the radios, of the people working, and it was like a home he had lost, and sometimes he thought, _ I should be there_. When he was driving in the simulator by himself, he would think _ why is this happening, _ and then _why does it still hurt me, I should be used to it_, and then he would go home and crawl into bed, and think about how he didn’t know how to go on existing without what he had lost, with this gaping hole in his heart, and it would hurt like a fresh wound all over again. 

But the next day, when the sun came up, he would rise again - what a miracle! He was alive and well, and the days sprawled forth still. Even when it didn't feel like it, there was progression. He was meeting strange and wonderful new people and exploring new places, and experiencing life as he had never before, and these experiences carved new places within him to fit and exist, and he was still living and loving, and he was an organic, breathing, part of the world, and he had not lost everything - in fact, he was beginning to suspect that he was gaining more than he had ever lost. He had not been reduced. Now he knew that he was more than the sum of his achievements. Hadn’t he lost it all, and wasn’t he still here? Wasn’t he still fighting the good fight? He was buoyant - he was rising above it. 

This healing - it was not linear, nor was it quick, but it was happening.

And he found that there was light in the world still - it was filled with it in fact; beamed from every crevice and corner he set his eyes upon, and he was still young and the world still opened to him infinitely. Maybe he had been broken, but he was better now, and stronger now, for it. He was greater, and more whole than he had ever been before.

In his chest - a warm, gilded fluttering. What was it? It was hope, that wondrous, wondrous thing - he’d forgotten how it felt.

When he thought the question again, _ what am I going to do next? _ He thought it with the understanding that he was so lucky, that there were so many avenues open for him to go down, even if it was not the one he had initially envisioned. This world was rife with possibility. 

He understood now that this is real life, this is the human existence - your dreams fall and disintegrate, and then you find new ones to chase.

He would be just fine. It had taken a year of healing for him to know this indubitably, to believe in it with his beating, living, loving, whole, heart, but this was fine. He knew it now, rejoiced in it, and he could wear it like armor.

When Toro Rosso came calling at the end of the year, it gave him pause.

Was he in a good space mentally to do this again? Could he go back without feeling like a kicked dog, without feeling ashamed of it, without feeling like a last resort? Was there too much bad blood and enmity between them? Could he put the past behind him and start anew? Was this dream that he had once deified - this dream that had once consumed his entire being whole - still something he longed for?

At the end of this dream, the first time around, he’d been so fucking fucked up living it. It had become a perversion of the childhood dream. There was nothing worth feeling that way again.

But - he was stronger now. He knew his own worth. He had been broken once, but he’d put himself back together, stronger and better. He knew the truth of it, felt it, deep in his bones and in his soul. Whether or not the world believed in him held little weight now - he believed in himself, and this was more than enough. _ He_, had always been enough. Never again would he give them the power to make him feel like that. There was nothing they could do to him to crush him like that again, he would not allow it.

They’d beaten him down, and yet he’d risen.

And still, in his heart, the little boy who had once dreamed of F1, still believed in the dream. It did not consume him anymore, but he still believed in it. 

He did not know what new monsters lurked in the dark, but he brought with him enough light to defeat them all. He was of strong body, steady hands, clear eyes, sound mind, pure heart, and unshakeable faith.

Could he let himself have this second chance at his first dream?

He could.


End file.
